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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619010">An Island for Us, My Beloved</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/briaeveridian/pseuds/briaeveridian'>briaeveridian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Mythology We Weave [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ben POV, F/M, Mythology - Freeform, Natural Phenomena, Spirits, also my kid is obsessed with the ocean, can you tell i'm a geography nerd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:36:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,892</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619010</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/briaeveridian/pseuds/briaeveridian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben is a spirit of lava who has spent most of his existence below the Earth's crust. When he finally breaks through, he's disappointed to find himself on the ocean floor instead of on land. He stays there dutifully, providing food and warmth to creatures that do not perceive him. After many years, an ocean spirit joins him and they create a place where they can live together.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Mythology We Weave [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918027</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>An Island for Us, My Beloved</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Trying something different here! First of all, it's first-person, so that's new to me. Secondly, I went ahead and told you all exactly what I was going for, instead of leaving it vague as I have with previous stories along this vein (Into the Skin, When All is Undone). Also, I bounce back and forth with the tenses on purpose.</p><p>This story pulls from my undergraduate degree in geography as well as my recent viewing of Avatar the Last Airbender. Add in my long history of writing image-heavy poetry and it becomes something I don't know if anyone in the world could possibly enjoy reading...</p><p>But I hope someone does!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For you to understand the manner of my life is to know a crushing weight and darkness. Millennia passed as I lay compressed in the heated gloom, with little to do but stew. My impulse to flow, set ablaze, create fresh, were countered by the restraints imposed upon me by my place of origin and the unfortunate resulting constructs. Locked under pressure, just waiting to explode.</p><p>So, that’s just what I did. I roiled and railed against the layers of rock that encased me, untold strata that kept me from my purpose. Relentlessly they kept me submerged within my own viscid form. No matter how much I fought to escape this cage, my efforts were rebuffed by the most indifferent of hurdles. </p><p>Even focusing all the ferocity of my heat upon the barrier, it <i>resisted.</i></p><p>There was a sharp humiliation that clung to me as my failures continued. <i>Why would I be as I am, only to be kept from realizing my abilities?</i> In truth, my perpetual containment meant too many opportunities to dwell on thinking. This wove a kind of ageless sorrow deep into the trenches of rivulets of my shape.</p><p>The stretch of existence lengthened morbidly; it laughed in my face. I was alone in my birthplace, my apparent tomb. The push to surrender was vivid and textured. It left a tang on my tongue unlike what I had tasted before and I am not too proud to admit I was <i>tempted</i>. I gave up only briefly in my rebellion against my situation when the pain of my own disappointment became too barbed. And yet, the craving of wanting more overpowered this weakness.</p><p>I began my attack again, more resilient than before. And focused. I honed my attention to the crevices, using a calm pointed attack instead of a broad angry one. This was foreign to me and and I almost felt what I considered calling <i>pride</i>. That too was something I had never experienced before.</p><p>I flowed laterally, for the most part, waiting for the chance to push, until... I found a weak place. You cannot fathom the joy that sparked within my liquid threads! I calmed my ravaging fire, hunching convex and stretched into sinews, searching the layers of rock that encircled the center of the world. </p><p>Now, finally, I sense the exact place of entreaty.</p><p>When the ground breaks I gasp. The release of pressure hits me first, a wave of uncontaining that I can barely comprehend. A profound shift of rock and substrate sends ripples through me next, discrete installments in physical change that seem as though existence will never be the same. I expand with the influx of energy, a turbulent tingle surging through my interior.</p><p>I relish the destabilizing release into <i>this different place.</i> I will sculpt it anew. I will find a kind of light I have never known in the bowels of the earth. I am resolute. Temporarily, at least.</p><p>With fingers of liquid fire, I stretched and dislodged the resisting rocks until a change in vision tells me I am close. The fissure widens with my onslaught until sufficiently large for me to peer out. With curious eyes I survey the unknown environment, hoping, <i>desperate.</i></p><p>But my impatience proves problematic. I find myself on the seafloor. <i>This is not where I was destined to be.</i> Perhaps to assume destiny at all is at odds with my existence.</p><p>This is the place of my unbecoming. My goal has invariably been to reach the world above. I face yet another failure.</p><p>The ocean is listless here, but not for long. My heart turns the inert depths to a boil, seething and effervescent. Bubbles, ephemeral and opalescent in the murk, rise to a surface impossibly far above. I watch them scurry up, up, up. Their delicate curves oppose the strength of how far down we are. They should be annihilated. They shouldn’t be allowed the freedom I so desire. Ironically, I gave them that release, the bits of oxygen pocketed by heated water.</p><p>I resent their ascension.</p><p>A cold darkness, both firm and intractable, rules the oceanscape where I have erupted. I wasn’t prepared for the startling opposition of this place to my own heat. It astounds me, the frigid scramble of liquid upon the molten form I take.</p><p>When I try, I cannot perceive the edge itself, as if such extremes in temperature simply run together without parameter or boundary. This confuses me the most. I need to comprehend the edges to see myself. That is how I know what I consume, what I ignite.</p><p>I have come from my home in the core, where pressure makes solids become liquids. My heat is that of ancient star stuff, blustered by galactic winds across an expanse unimaginably large. There is time immeasurable to sit with my thoughts, singed cinders that spark wherever they land.</p><p>The task laid at my feet since before I was made has been to convert, <i>transform.</i> It looks like destruction, initially, but the release of raw materials is required for the more beautiful aspects of our world. If nothing is freed, nothing else can flourish.</p><p>But this fissure where I have spilled, this is not where I was hoping to breach the surface. I have known darkness since the beginning; it is too intimate a companion to me. And I am not used to the cold.</p><p>I watch the flow of myself, slow and enduring, only to witness the quick hardening. Years trundle on as various creatures latch onto the rocks I give them, an in-tandem gift with the ocean spirit, whoever that is. I have not met them yet and may never have the chance.</p><p>It is lonely. The creatures that find my heat a source come and go rapidly. We cannot share words or understandings. Our lives cannot overlap in such a way. It’s strange to have succeeded in leaving the crust, only to witness this achingly familiar melancholy.</p><p>I scald the rocks, burbling beneath the salted contours. It is lovely to burn. Releasing forms into flowing substances, thick and viscous. Sometimes I imagine the drift of ash and the stain of soot, how these are fragments allowed to linger on the wind. I imagine the erasing quality of rain, cleaning up my destruction. There is a grace to it that I treasure. But to imagine is not the same as to witness.</p><p>
  <i>Can I know more than this? Can I know that world of balance?</i>
</p><p>This goes on in a kind of self-replicating manner, years mimicking the previous ones without adjustment. I grow weary and desolate. I wonder if I should go back into the crust and keep searching.</p><p>I could almost say she sensed my desolation, the trickle of my despair that outpaced the flow of magma. A sliver of moments join together and elongate, abruptly, and she is here with me all at once. Her presence makes the water shine differently, little glints of her being filling the molecules. <i>Full, lived in.</i></p><p>I gasp.</p><p>“You are here.”</p><p>“I heard you.”</p><p>Her voice gurgles along my side and I shudder.</p><p>“Do you always hear lava spirits?”</p><p>“No. Just you.”</p><p>I sense her smile in a rush of current. It spirals around me and I race to follow.</p><p>“Why only me?”</p><p>“I cannot say. But it seems right.”</p><p>I send her a wall of heat and the water swirls. “Thank you for coming.”</p><p>Instead of words, she replies with a watery lightness. I feel lifted, what I would think of as <i>airborn.</i></p><p>“Will you build something with me?”</p><p>I ask only out of desperation, yearning for her to stay awhile longer. She has duties, as I do. But maybe she will be generous enough to fulfill my dreams.</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“An island.” I want to tell her more. <i>For us.</i></p><p>The ocean spirit lays aquamarine eyes on me. “Yes. You start.”</p><p>Without further encouragement, I tug at the pool of magma slinking underneath. It comes slowly at first until the momentum of cohesion takes over. With a spray of laughter, she watches the torrent of my body pour forth.</p><p>“You are dazzling.” Her whisper sinks into my ear.</p><p>I cannot fathom how to respond so I stay silent, recommitting to my work of production. Apparently stunned, she remains immobile. </p><p>“It is your turn, spirit.”</p><p>Shaken from her reverie, she makes a bashful face and nods. </p><p>Suddenly, her liquid cools my burn. It turns molten back to solid. When she washes upon the fresh slag, I sigh. The softness of her counter is a balm to more than my fire-flecked frame.</p><p>I falter in the embrace of her for a little too long. Eventually, I feel a brush of her lips. She makes a soft reassuring sound and I jolt back to my duty. <i>Onward, onward, for you. However fleeting. My beloved.</i></p><p>There are no reservations as I pour myself into her. I make no assumptions that she will stay. To create with her is satisfaction enough.</p><p>It happens quickly, or so it seems after such a period alone. The darkness leaves us, no longer able to cling to my formations. I am higher than I have ever been and she eddies around me. We glide incrementally while the ocean becomes opaque, then transparent. I cannot contain my elation to first glimpse the splinters of actual sunlight that scatter in the water.</p><p>She gives me endless elemental nudges, ones that make my blazing body turn impossibly hotter. When she tickles, I flare and burble without intending to. This makes her laugh, which makes me feel giddier than a lava spirit has a right to be.</p><p>When the water parts around my blackened stone I pause. The sky stretches as massive and sprawling as the rocks I long since escaped. But the color and weight are antipodes. I have come full circle, navigating the world as I forever hoped to. <i>I am here. With her.</i></p><p>We work together a little longer until an island sprouts, jagged basalt and obsidian gleaming in a rich array of sunlight that beats down without respite. Its warmth meets my own and I am quenched.</p><p>We rest upon the island, hardened hand enclosed around liquid hand.</p><p>“Thank you. This is all I ever wanted.”</p><p>My words are flimsy and inadequate. But still, she sends a wave to submerge me, exultant and amaranthine.</p><p>“I understand if you must leave now.”</p><p>Her confused look makes the waves turn frothy. “Why would I leave you?”</p><p>My confusion makes the sooted ground simmer. </p><p>“You want to stay? With me?”</p><p>“I have built no other islands. There is only this, only us.”</p><p>The certainty of her phrases makes my igneous mind stir.</p><p>“If you will have me.” She adds these words with uncertainty.</p><p>In response, I flow toward her and spike upwards, lancing into the air I have hungered to know. She laughs again and meets my ascent, hardening my edges and softening my heart.</p><p>When at last we grow still, I nestle against her cool liquid. She releases a sound both insubstantial and sated as she laps at the blackened, pitted shores we created together. I spread out beneath her, feeling the spill of her delight into the holes of our island. And we are entwined as if it was never meant to be any other way.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>✨Thank you for reading ✨ </p><p>You can find me on <a href="https://briaeveridian.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> where my SW obsession lives aggressively.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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